I would suggest backing up your home directory, then when you install LM9, you can try importing settings from your old home directory. You should be careful with this though, as sometimes upgraded versions change the way data is stored. Always make backups before changing things, even if it seems redundant.. it's nice to know you have a safety net to fall back on!

Mounting /home to it's own partition is highly recommended too, that way you can upgrade/install easier, because backing up is easier. Before performing the upgrade, you can move your /home/user to /home/user.old, then grab settings from the old dir.

Thanks for your reply. I am still a bit hazy about the procedure for installation.

Should I install over my Ubuntu 10.4 and will Mint recognize it's existence? I can also use a Partitioning program (even Windows 7) to delete the Ubuntu partitions and install in the free space. I don't have any vital data in Ubuntu (I use Windows for that) so backing up my home directory is not an issue.

I assume that the download will be an ISO file that I will burn to a bootable CD (again, using Win 7). Is that correct?

If I understand correctly, you do not have any important documentation in your Ubuntu installation. It is a “bare bones” installation. As Curmudgeon said, if you have important data it is always best to make sure you have your data backed up.

If you just accepted, during installation of Ubuntu, the defaults while installing, therefore if memory serves me right, you should be able to download the M9 .iso, burn it to a cd or dvd as you did for the ubuntu installation disk and install it the same way you did Ubuntu. It will overwrite the Ubuntu installation. Hope this helps.

Mint 9 is a huge improvement over Ubuntu 10.04. I would recommend just blowing away your Ubuntu install. That's the easiest option anyway, since you don't have any important data stored on your Linux partition.

jlr1701 wrote:Mint 9 is a huge improvement over Ubuntu 10.04. I would recommend just blowing away your Ubuntu install. That's the easiest option anyway, since you don't have any important data stored on your Linux partition.

I am pretty happy with 10.4, so saying that it is a "huge improvement" is saying quite a bit. What's the best way to blow it away - I can probably just delete the 2 partitions (including the SWAP partition) through Windows 7, which hopefully, will result in free space that Mint 9 will recognize in the installation program.

jlr1701 wrote:Mint 9 is a huge improvement over Ubuntu 10.04. I would recommend just blowing away your Ubuntu install. That's the easiest option anyway, since you don't have any important data stored on your Linux partition.

I am pretty happy with 10.4, so saying that it is a "huge improvement" is saying quite a bit. What's the best way to blow it away - I can probably just delete the 2 partitions (including the SWAP partition) through Windows 7, which hopefully, will result in free space that Mint 9 will recognize in the installation program.

If you have a better way, let me know.

Well, the reason I say that Mint 9 is a huge improvement over Ubuntu 10.04 is because, just as with the 9.10 release, Ubuntu has a MAJOR nVidia driver bug that for me is a show-stopper. I was not and am not willing to reinstall the video drivers every time I reboot! I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mint 9 gives me no problems at all with the video, so the Mint team did something that squashed that Ubuntu bug. So for me, yeah, Mint is a huge improvement over Ubuntu. But if you haven't had major issues like that, then maybe it's not so huge an improvement... *shrugs*

As far as your partitioning goes, yeah, that should work. Or, you can just tell Mint 9 to reformat those partitions during the installation.